


Her Husband

by chamsie



Category: Biohazard | Resident Evil (Gameverse)
Genre: F/M, Post-Resident Evil 7, re7
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-10
Updated: 2017-12-10
Packaged: 2019-02-13 03:27:30
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,804
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12974865
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/chamsie/pseuds/chamsie
Summary: If she'd had a choice, he would have never learned to shoot a gun at all.Mia, Ethan, and navigating their life post-game.





	Her Husband

**Author's Note:**

> Recently finished a let's play for RE7 and I'm crying bc I can't find the Ethan/Mia fans. I need some love for the OTP.
> 
> This is a super rough mess of ideas that I blurted out into type in less than 24 hrs. Pls excuse any errors; I'll be returning to edit, I just want to get this out before it sits and becomes stale.

Life after what Blue Umbrella calls ‘the Dulvey Incident’ is weird and dream-like.  A middle ground that walks the line between their married life and their new life as survivors.   Nothing's the same, not that she ever thought it would be.  They’ve survived the house, but the struggle remains.

 

Her husband has picked up new habits.  He surprises her in every way.  The way he moves is different from her memories, the way he walks and thinks.  She always assumes the habits formed from his time in Dulvey, but really, she was gone for three years.  He’s still Ethan, but he’s an Ethan she hasn’t known for three years.  That's a long time for someone to change.  Then there are some habits she can knows can only have come from that house.  Like the watches.

 

Ethan's never been one for watches, but he's worn a big black one on his left wrist since the day his Genome Codex was taken.  The watch is a simple analog one, massive face, thick band, and it makes a steady _tick, tick, tick_ that would drive her up the wall if she didn’t know he needed it.  It barely looks anything like the codex.  A smart watch would have been more accurate, but that’s enough money to make Ethan own up to his problems.  There’s a world of difference between acknowledging something versus facing it head on.  

 

The watch cuts a dark line on his wrist that she’s not used to seeing outside of that marsh.  Looking at it draws her attention to the scar right above it.  There’s a massive scar on Ethan’s arm - pink, raw,  _ugly -_  and it throbs something fierce in the night, makes it hard for him to sleep.  He hisses when he rubs at it, has taken to wearing longer sleeves out of the house.   Every glimpse of that deep blemish makes Mia's heart ache and her stomach lurch.  She doesn’t remember it too clearly, but she knows she put that there.  It’s her mark on him.  It makes her sick.   

 

Ethan, the poor man.  He waves it off like it’s nothing, as if a few days embroiled in this life, a few days spent surviving the Bakers, surviving the Molded, surviving _Eveline_ were nothing more than a day on the job.  He’s desensitized and numb - dissociating - and he doesn’t even notice it.  His PTSD is as bad as hers and it keeps the both of them awake at night.  They’re broken people now, their broken edges almost lining up, but not quite enough to stop from cutting each other.  

* * *

In the aftermath of Eveline’s defeat, once Redfield and his team had swooped in to get both her and Ethan, they’re separated and questioned.  She doesn’t know what they did with Ethan, he’s never told her, but they put her under lock and key.  Treat her with respect but suspicion.  They can't not have known her connection to the company by then as Blue Umbrella’s been keeping eyes on them long before E-type series came to fruition.  

 

It’s an interrogation, but they’re not unkind.  Maybe she could have been angry, but they did it without Ethan to witness - they let her have that at least - and she’s grateful.  There’s not much left to keep hidden, not after everything Ethan found, but there are still some things Mia would rather he not know.  Not yet.  For as long as she can keep it away from him because he’s already lost so much to this world of bioweapons, corporate competition, and bioterrorism.  

 

She tells them everything.  Almost.  She holds back just a bit, but not out of loyalty.  Blue Umbrella had been one of the competition, but her company had sent her and Alan in with barely anything.  They’d abandoned her and the subject once it became clear that Eveline had gone out of control.  Whatever loyalty she’d harboured has long dried up.  

 

She’s learned how to be bitter.  

 

The only reason she holds back at all is because it pays to keep some cards hidden.  

* * *

They sit together at home and she knows the footsteps of that house still haunt them both.  Ethan’s hands shake all the time.  Shake when he makes breakfast, shake when he brushes his teeth, shake when she gets close.  He sleeps with a gun under his pillow, always facing her now, and a pocket knife in his hand.  

 

He doesn’t say it, but she knows he feels unsafe.  He needs the security of a glock in his hands because he spent days in the dark, always anticipating, knowing the only way to live was to have a weapon on hand.  The shadows make him jump, regardless of morning or night.  There are no more monsters to fight here, but there is Mia.  He knows he has a problem.  He doesn’t ever go so far as to carry a gun around their home, but she knows the knife is always on his person.  Tucked into a pocket or slipped into the waistband of his pants if he has none.  

 

It’s become the opposite for her.  They compliment each other like that, the way they always have.  She’s spent too much of her life wielding weapons, spent too much time wielding them against Ethan.  Sometimes, when her nightmares are at their worst, she thinks she remembers holding the knife - the screwdriver - the chainsaw.  Remembers how it felt to cut - stab - _slice_ at the flesh of her husband as Eveline laughed and laughed and told her to teach _Daddy_ a lesson.  

 

She’s not sure if they still want kids.  Not after this.  

 

Just another thing she’s had to give up to the little bitch.  

* * *

Blue Umbrella doesn’t leave well alone after.  Why would they?  They’re a massive corporation with government backing and Mia is one woman.  So of course she ends up working with them.  Of course she does because she chose this life when she was young and stupid; just an optimistic lab assistant with dreams of changing the world.  When she was too fresh faced and naive to know any better.  

 

Subjects like Eveline are some of her worst fears, along with the long lasting effects of infection in both her and Ethan, but there is a new fear, one that makes itself known soon enough.  

 

Redfield is the one who brings it up first in an offhand comment.  

 

“Resourceful, your husband.”  

 

It’s just a comment.  An observation on the quick intelligence of the man she married, but it sets off all of Mia’s sense.  A bright red flag that has her heart racing in her chest.  She knows that tone.  Knows what happens when operatives like Redfield start giving out compliments like that.  Anger, panic, and fright steal her breath.  

 

“Not him,” she croaks hoarsely, immediately.  She sounds harsh even to her own ears.  “Not Ethan, Chris.”  

 

He is taken aback by her vehemence, and throws his hands up in a sign of peace.  He replies, “Of course not.”  

 

But she can hear the lie in it.    

 

Eventually, Ethan will be too good an option to leave alone.  Redfield can say “of course not” all he wants but someday Blue Umbrella’s going to come asking after her husband, her husband who’s learned how to efficiently stab vitals, to shoot firearms of various nature with passable accuracy, whose lick-sharp mind solved puzzles after puzzle in that horror house.  He handled that hell better than anyone could have imagined or asked of him, and it’s that very same level-headed steadiness that’s going to bite him in the ass.  He’ll have made it through only to be invited back in with open arms.  

 

She can’t let it happen.  Not her husband.  Not Ethan.  She’ll die before she lets this life take him away from her.  It already almost has.  

* * *

Her husband was never one for sports.  Honestly, it was laughable how bad Ethan was athletically.  She remembers cracking up at him when he last tried to chuck a football.  He performed dismally at the company barbeque, and she recalls clearly the indignancy on his face when he tripped the one time he actually managed to get his hands on the ball.  'I'm not a sports star,' he’d retaliated, and she'd giggled and kissed him because he was adorable.  She’d married a nerd and she hadn’t minded one bit.  

 

Now though…now he runs circles around her.  He was infected, they all were, and it’s left something different in him.  He carries things heavier than he used to with ease, takes strange shortcuts in and around the house that are taxing even for the athletic.  Doors are given a moment’s hesitation, a second of thought and analyzation, before he pushes through.  She notices him looking over his shoulder like he’s being hunted even here, safe in their home.  

 

He moves like an operative, and it scares her so much.  Redfield’s comment rings in her mind and she’s so irrationally scared that she eventually takes it out on him one day.  He’s confused of course, and hurt, and it escalates into a fight that has them sleeping separately at night until the nightmares become too much and she seeks him out on the couch.  

 

Ethan says nothing.  Stares groggily at her, hair a mess, bags beneath his eyes, and does nothing as she climbs in beside him.  Had he even slept at all?  It’s a tight fit on their couch, but the fold of his arms and the heat of his body helps.  His heart beats steady in her ear and she doesn’t deserve any of this.  Doesn’t deserve a man like Ethan.  

 

Dear god does she love him - her husband.  Loves him so much her heart aches and her lungs can't breathe.  The horror they went through would have torn any other couple apart, but it’s only made her fall even more.  A feat she didn’t think was possible.  He braved the unknown woods and the madness of that house - monsters and _Eveline_ \- to get her back.  He almost lost an arm - did lose an arm - and it makes her eyes sting everytime she thinks about it.  

 

He deserves better than a woman like her.  

 

“Mia,” Ethan exhales.  He holds her tight, clings almost desperately and she knows the feeling because she’s clinging back the same.  Out of everything, what she’d missed most during those three damned years was this: the feel of him.  To be able to touch him and feel alive and real.  “We're not completely back yet, but it's...okay.  We’re doing it together.”

 

He’s so fucking optimistic.  It makes her remember all over again why she fell for him in the first place.  He is the best decision she has ever made.  

 

“Together,” she repeats to him.  He presses a kiss to her head.  

 

They sleep peacefully to morning.  

**Author's Note:**

> RE7 is my first major exposure to the RE series. So I know there's probably 23894028 inaccuracies and incongruities with the lore and Chris Redfield. Really, I just wanted this out because I have too many Ethan/Mia feels and nothing to do with them.
> 
> It's been brought to my attention that Chris is OOC, so I'm terribly sorry! I guess it's easier to say Mia misread his tone. She IS paranoid and suffering from PTSD, so I don't think it's too far out of the park to say she's reading things that might not be there. Talking more to Chris will make it quickly obvious that he wouldn't support recruiting Ethan, but she won't know that at the moment.


End file.
